House forces vote on amendment that would limit NSA bulk surveillance

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/23/house-amendment-nsa-bulk-surveillance

by uptown • 13 years ago

210 35 13 years ago

guardian.co.uk

This is a HUGE turning point. PLEASE call your member of Congress using this easy calling tool: http://defundthensa.com/.

reneherse• 13 years ago

Just used this site to call my representative. It was super easy, and the person who took my message was very polite.

Let's put some momentum on this thing!

runn1ng• 13 years ago

hahaha

You can't be serious. NSA simply won't lose.

grabhive4• 13 years ago

All such agencies will lose if we start creating software more responsibly. I understand that Stallman is a somewhat controversial figure here, but his mantra of "freedom over convenience" might bear repeating.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

You are heavily downvoted, but the NSA self-funding would not be entirely without precedent. They certainly have the ability, the only question is if they have balls large enough to actually do it.

tenpoundhammer• 13 years ago

While this is a nice gesture and I certainly support it, it's hard to believe it would have significant impact. It's clear the NSA is willing to lie to both the public and congress and bend whatever rules they have to. So this will probably just force them through a new loop hole to get where they are today.

When you have your own private supreme court(FISA Courts) to rubber stump rules for you, it's pretty easy to find and/or create loop holes.

On the plus side, if it gets stopped at least we will know who to throw out of office.

grabhive4• 13 years ago

The NSA continues to be viewed as a shadowy government agency, limited in its capabilities by federal law. But what do we really know about that? Besides trivial inconvenience, is there any real disadvantage to taking the most paranoid and defensive stance against it?

I continue bringing this up whenever a submission like this appears, because I am very much afraid that the technical community will accept a congressional victory as "okay, let's continue business as usual", when we need to be reinventing everything that has made mass-wiretapping possible in the first place.

krapp• 13 years ago

when we need to be reinventing everything that has made mass-wiretapping possible in the first place.

Are you suggesting we somehow roll back the last sixty-odd years of telecommunications and information technology? What do you suggest we replace it with?

pvnick4• 13 years ago

This is the best chance we've yet had. We have actual support from congress! Please, even if you do nothing else for this cause, call your congressman and urge him/her to support this (the Amash Amendment).

Here's a helpful webpage that'll give you your congressman's phone number from your zip code as well as a script to read: http://defundthensa.com/

mtgx• 13 years ago

I agree. It seems very few people are actually calling Congress [1]. If we could achieve this with only so little, imagine if everyone who feels "helpless" but doesn't call, would also call. It would help a lot more.

[1] http://sina.is/call-now-for-privacy/

pvnick4• 13 years ago

Takes literally 33 seconds to call (just timed it)

rpicard• 13 years ago

Is there any documented case where calling representatives has made a difference?

Hilyin• 13 years ago

Question, they keep mentioning phone records. What about the mass surveillance of email, texts, multimedia, and the cooperation of all those big corporations? Does this include that as well?

bendoernberg2• 13 years ago

It doesn't, but it's a concrete first step. If we can win this fight, we redefine the debate, and the discussion becomes "which part of the NSA's surveillance will be blocked next?"

LoganCale• 13 years ago

Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act applies to business records in general, which can include email and web browsing metadata in additional to phone.

marcamillion• 13 years ago

How is this not getting upvoted more?

pvnick4• 13 years ago

It's creeping up the front page. Looks like it got hit early on by the HN purists who flagged it a bunch, but now that they're out of ammo it's getting up there.

neltnerb2• 13 years ago

Did a double take at this:

"Alexander's meeting was listed as 'top-secret' and divided into two two-hour sessions, the first for Republicans and the second for Democrats."

sologoub• 13 years ago

They should compare the transcripts...

neltnerb2• 13 years ago

I have the suspicion that transcripts are distinctly forbidden =P

amirmc2• 13 years ago

This seems like a great (and concrete) step forward and folks should call their congressmen. However, the following gave me pause for thought.

"... the NSA itself has indicated its willingness to consider abandoning the phone-records collection provided the telecommunications companies it partners with retains the data."

pvnick4• 13 years ago

This actually seems like a reasonable compromise

walshemj2• 13 years ago

So you trust the phone company more than the NSA - remind me again what over sight the phone companies have from the FCC?

The FCC is unable to actually regulate in some areas (ADSL for example)as states rights trump its ability to be an effective regulator.

grabhive4• 13 years ago

Be careful with your optimism. If the amendment passes, it will be a sign to many that the days of draconian domestic surveillance are over. The trouble is that this may or may not be the case; we likely won't be told the truth. And yet our defenses will be lowered just the same.

dil8• 13 years ago

It is good to see that some politicians still have the balls to speak truthfully about this issue...

baconner• 13 years ago

The White House statement on the amendment is really something to behold.

"... We look forward to continuing to discuss these critical issues with the American people and the Congress.

However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. ..."

Not the product of an informed process - and whose fault is that?

More... http://pastebin.com/RF5U59N0

d23• 13 years ago

I'm crossing my fingers on this one. I have hoped from the get-go that Obama was trying to do some political jiu-jitsu to get the House to fight against him on the NSA thing by pretending to support it. People attack him for talking all loftily about most topics and then not getting anything done, so I found it strange that he basically didn't even pretend that the NSA scandal was bad. Keep in mind he didn't start the program; maybe he never really supported it. Everything he's tried to do has resulted in congress opposing him, so trying to change his tactics seems like the logical thing to do.

zukhan• 13 years ago

"In case you ever thought writing, calling, or emailing your representatives was a waste of time, take it from Steve Hildebrand, Barack Obama's openly gay deputy national campaign director: "I don't think our voices are as powerful as they should be. I think too many people in the gay community do not push their elected officials as hard as they should. If you had 20 gay people together in a room and asked how many of them actually have reached out and either called, e-mailed or sent a letter to their member of Congress over the last two months, I would say the vast, vast majority of them will have done nothing. My suggestion is that people need to become strong activists, that we need to multiply by hundreds the number of activists we have in the gay community. We need more voices, we need louder voices, and we need to tell politicians at every level we're not willing to take their excuses anymore."

And in case you needed reason not to write, call, or email your representative: You will almost never be able to get her on the line. An office staffer will answer the phone (or sometimes just a voicemail box), sort the letters, and go through emails, responding with a form reply, if anything.

What those staffers will hand your legislator, likely, is a tally of how many notes and calls they received from X number of constituents on Y different issues. That summation, however, is what's powerful. In a legislator's very busy day, these briefs are easy to digest and send the most black-and-white picture of what his voters believe.

So yes, your letters and phone calls matter. In aggregate. JUST LIKE VOTES!"

logn• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm too cynical, but the NSA will just redefine in their minds what all the terminology means so they can keep doing what they want. If we forbid "collecting records" they'll consider "collecting" to be taking ownership of records and allow themselves to query via PRISM on site at Facebook et al. If that's considered a 'search' violating the 4th amendment, they'll make an AI robot to do the searching. They'll be constantly one step ahead in making new technology to avoid being restricted by terminology. People need to go to prison for what they've already done. Passing a new law to explicitly forbid their past and current behavior only legitimizes what they've done and will lead to further acceptance of their actions.

House forces vote on amendment that would limit NSA bulk surveillance

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